any case it was a valley for
the time deserted of men. Women we could see in plenty, drawing water or
bearing peats in from the bogs behind their dwellings, or crossing from
house to house or toun to toun, with plaids drawn tightly over their
heads, their bodies bent to meet the blasts that made their clothing
banner and full. Nor children either were there in that most barren
country, or they kept within, sheltering the storms assailing, and the
want of them (for I have ever loved the little ones) added twenty-fold
to my abhorrence of the place.

We had to hide but rarely, I say: two or three times when down in the
valley's depths there showed a small group of men who were going in the
same direction as ourselves by the more natural route, at a quarter of
a league's distance in advance of us. They were moving with more speed
than we, and for a time we had the notion that they might be survivors,
like ourselves, of Argile's clan. But at last this fancy was set at
flight by the openness of their march, as well as by their stoppage at
several houses by the way, from which they seemed to be joined by other
men, who swelled their numbers so that after a time there would be over
a score of them on the mission, whatever it might be. In that misty
rain-swept day the eye could not carry far, and no doubt they were
plainer to our view than we were to theirs among the drab vapours of
the hillside. But once or twice we thought they perceived us, for they
stopped and looked to the left and up the brae-face we were on, and then
it was we had to seek the shelter of tree or bush. If they saw us, they
seemed to suspect no evil, for they held on their way, still ahead of
us, and making for Tynree. Whoever they were, they became at last so
manifest a danger to our escape out of the head of the glen that we fell
back anew on the first plan of going through the corries on the south
side of the glen and piercing by them to Dalness. In the obscurity of a
great shower that set up a screen between us and the company marching
to Tynree, we darted down the brae, across the valley, and over to the
passage they call the Lairig Eilde, that is on the west of the great
Little Herd hill of Etive, and between it and Ben Fhada or the Long
Mount, whose peaks you will find with snow in their gullies in the
height of summer.

It was with almost a jocund heart I turned my back on Glencoe as we took
a drove-path up from the river. But I glanced with a shive